Fox Molybdenum

The Crazy Fox Moybdenum-Tungsten property  is located about 100 km north of Kamloops BC.  And on the eastern edge of the caribou plateau about 20 km NW of Little Fort.

The property has been known since the late 1920’s with attention focussed on a hi grade showing on the western side of a small granite porphyry plug with reported values up to 10% molybdenum. The property came into prominence in the 1960’s with the province wide boom in porphyry exploration. Between about 1960 and 1984, several major companies performed geochemical, and geophysical surveys and had completed relatively small drill programs. The property was owned at this time by local prospector, rancher and business entrepreneur G.L. Jim., Following Mr Jim’s death  and with world  moly prices at relatively low values, and exploration in BC at record low levels, the property was eventually allowed to lapse. It was restaked as the Crazy Fox property  in 2000 by prospectors Lloyd Addie and Robert Bourdon as an extension of an area to the south of the current area of activity where Addie and Bourdon were interested in Massive sulphide potential. 

In 2004, new logging roads were built into the area of the granite plug. Prospecting revealed an additional high grade moly showing, (The Road Showing), on the eastern margin of the Granite plug, approximately 1000m from the original showings, with values up to 3.0% moly

Addie and Bourdon concluded an agreement with Newmac Resouces for the Crazy Fox Property in 2005 and a small geochem program was commenced in October to fill in some detail in the old data.  Prospecting during the course of this program revealed an additional showing with values to 1.8% Mo .  In late 2005, Newmac concluded a small trenching and sampling program on the southeastern flank of the granite plug. At the same time loggers were actively clearing much of the central and western portions of the main area of exposed granitic rocks. Newmac was ready to take advantage of the newly created access and exposures and commenced a diamond drilling and trenching program in early 2006. This program eventually completed over 24000 feet of NQ drilling over next 4 months.

geology and settings of the property

At Crazy Fox a small granitic plug or plugs up to 1x2 km in extent intrude volcanic rocks and related sediments of the Nicola series. These include massive flows, and agglomerates. Fine grained tuffs and coarser fragmental units are also evident, as are black graphitic shales and siltstones. 

The granite is of cretaceous age, about 102 my and exhibits several distinctly different textural phases.

1)      A coarse grained leucocratic granite appears to be the earliest phase, it varies texturally from sub porphyritic to equigranular and most often has some degree of clay sericite alteration. Imparting a general grey to creamy colouration. The unit commonly lacks almost all mafic minerals  although a biotite variation does occur, it is not clear if the biotite bearing variant is a separate phase or is just part and parcel of the overall unit.

2)      A leucocratic quartz  feldspar porphyritic unit appears to be slightly younger than the coarse grained rock previously mentioned. It is about 25% quartz as both equigranular matrix and as subhedral phenocrysts. It contains porphyritic orthoclase  both as fresh looking crystals and as severely eroded and or zoned crystals. Biotite or other mafic minerals are usually absent. There is a slight orange colouration attributed to iron staining, but this has not been conclusively demonstrated.

3)      Dikes of creamy white aplite containing grey quartz pheocrysts or quartz eyes have been observed cutting the QFP unit  in the SE sector of the exposed granite.

4)      Rare narrow dikes of pale grey green fine grained basalt have been occasionally observed in the drill core and has been reported from surface in the NW sector of the granitic  plug.

At Crazy Fox, the regional geologic fabric lays northwest to southeast as it does over most of BC. It`s cut by strong north and northeast trending faults often tensional in nature.  Strong to regionally intense northwest trending contacts and structures conform also to the British Columbia general condition.  These structures are generally compressive in nature.

At Crazy Fox, diamond drilling by other companies in the early years revealed an underlying thrust fault which creates a “bottom” to the exposed granitic plug. Beyond which, the drill penetrates Nicola volcanics.  

Mineralization at Crazy Fox  is  fairly simple.  The most significant minerals are Molybdenite and Wolframite.  With molybdenite being the dominant member.  Occasional pegmatitic veins or pods contain  coarse molybdenite, less frequent coarse massive and crystalline wolframite  and rarely bismuthinite, pyrrhotite, & pyrite.  Fluorite is a common minor constituent of the pegmatite and is also observed on fractures and with quartz veinlets within the granite.  The Fluorine also manifests itself as fluoro-sericite, a distinctive yellow green variety.

By far, the most common molybdenite is seen as  selvages on quartz stringers and small veinlets. It has also rarely been observed as massive fracture or vein fillings up to 5 cm wide.  

As the drill approaches the Thrust fault, usually within 50 m , fractures subparallel to the thrust begin to appear, these generally become increasingly coated with a mixture of molybdenite and wolframite yielding a dark grey somewhat graphitic looking material smeared on the fracture face. I suspect that this is the material logged as ``graphitic`` by some of the early drill loggers. It lacks the moly colouration and it marks paper easily.

One of the unusual fracture types commonly encountered has been called `stylolitic`` it has a distinctive stylus like trace.  This type of fracture is commonly very heavily coated with a mixture of molybdenite and wolframite.  The fractures have occasionally been seen to blend into small moly bearing quartz veinlets.

Another very distinctive fracture related feature which may or may not contain molybdenite  is the Brain-rock feature. Or UST,  Unidirectional Seriate Texture.  These fractures may be straight, clustered , or  convoluted  and when  filled with quartz and molybdenite, the grade may exceed 0.3% Mo.  The quartz crystals growing into the fractures only grow in one direction. Volumetrically, the UST appears to be insignificant in grade calculations, but they are probably extremely important indicators of the mineralizing environment and cooling conditions of the magma.

The historical highgrade showings at Crazy Fox have been reported as up to 10% Mo.

A few boulders believed to represent this material have been recovered from near old hand dug trenches in the vicinity of the primary old workings. They are essentially a coarse quartz porphyry with coarse molybdenite liberally disseminated.  We have not yet encountered any of this material in drill core or surface exposures although pegmatitic rocks exposed in logging road construction have been in the 1% to 3%  Mo range.  Well mineralized fractures in aplitic material exposed in a small creek along the eastern margin of the granitic plug have returned 1.7% moly values across short intervals.   

The underlying Thrust is encountered between 275 to 330 m  (900 to 1100 feet)  depth, depending on the surface topography and the hole location.  It is apparent that molybdenum and tungsten mineralization was emplaced into fractures associated with the thrusting. It is also apparent that movement on many, even most, of these fractures continued after mineral emplacement.  In otherwords, thrusting occurred as intrusion and mineralization was taking place.   The obvious mineral exploration implication is: What does the underlying granite and mineralization look like and where is it?

Newmac embarked on a local sampling and prospecting program, while drilling was underway in 2006, to look at their claims proximal to the crazy fox deposit to try and determine whether there are any obvious geochemical clues to the location of the underlying source granite. No conclusions were forthcoming.

The 2006 drill program completed 7486 m of drilling in 33 drill holes in widespread moly- tungsten mineralization  and allowed the compilation of data at about 18 points of penetration of the thrust. 

During the summer of 2007,  Newmac was reviewing and resampling some of the core. During this period my colleague David Bridge  also reviewed the Nicola rocks underlying the thrust and concluded the lower plate was located southwest of the current surface granitic outcroppings.  This was reached after studying many slip faces and slikenside measurements  in the molybdenum and wolframite filled fractures associated with the underlying thrust.  David also looked at the relative degree of thermal metamorphism  associated with the underlying Nicola volcanics.  This varied from very low effects in the eastern and northeastern  sectors to strong hornfels, with strong secondary biotite and quartz stringers containing a few grains of wolframite and a few flecks of scheelite  recovered from the bottom of hole 12 in the southwestern sector.  The presence of visible tungsten and molybdenum in quartz stringers made a compelling argument for the source being nearby. 

Budgets and financings for junior companies being what they are, Newmac returned to the Crazy Fox property in the spring of 2007 with a smalldrill program attempting to demonstrate the much larger extent of mineralization and potential of the property  than indicated by the earlier program. As a result, drill hole 34 was located west of hole 12 and directed parallel to it.  Other holes were completed in the northwestern  and the eastern sector of the granite  in an attempt to demonstrate the size potential of the upper plate mineralization  It was not until later that fall  we were able to deepen hole 34, and then  turned the drill westwards on hole 41.

Drill hole 07-41 collared in granite and continued through the thrust fault at 391 m   (1273 feet)  into underlying granite  to a final drill depth of 1021m or 3348 feet .

The hole became mineralized as fracturing increased approaching the thrust in the upper plate. mineralization continued in the lower plate to the end of the hole.

This hole returned an interval of 430m  between 400m and 830 m  or 1410 feet assaying 0.1% Mo This interval also contains the following sub intervals:

150 m between 647 and 797 m  of 0.18 Mo 
 48 m between 709 and  757 m of 0.29 % Mo 
 14 m between 709 and  723 m of 0.58 % Mo

Tungsten values averaged 0.01% for the entire . 436m section.

Hole 44 was completed to 954m and in hind sight was collared too far forward, Or to the west. It went over and beyond the zone of mineralization. The hole returned an intersection of 0.07% Mo for 144m between 513m and 657m.  

Hole 47 completed to 796 m. Recently received assay results have shown an interval of 324 m (1063 feet) of 0.13% Mo.

Included in this interval is:

 190m (623 feet) of 0.18% Mo,
  72 m (236 feet) of 0.25% Mo,
  54 m (177 feet) of 0.29% Mo
  32 m (105 feet) of 0.35% Mo

To Date, approximately 14000 meters or 46000 feet of drilling has been completed by Newmac`s Drill contractor DJ DRILLING of Aldergrove BC and Watson Lake Yukon. Drilling on the Crazy Fox property has been NQ sized core  with more recent deep drilling using HQ equipment and reducing below the thrust fault to NQ.

Download the Summary Report (pdf) of the 2006 Diamond Drilling Program at the Crazy Fox Property:
Click here.

Maps

 Detail Area of 2006-2007-2008 - Drillhole Location Plan
 Poster - Drill Hole Location Plan